Saturday, May 30, 2009

Introducing a new wireless kit, called the WiNet Kit. This kit makes it super simple to setup remote user input and wireless sensor logging.The WiNet allows you to wirelessly communicate between a Arduino attached to your PC's USB port and an Arduino TouchShield device.

The pair of XBee Shields are directly pre-paired with each other so serial communications are super simple.

This is the base module that talks directly to the pc, it's an Arduino and a Xbee Shield.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

I moved! And it took a lot longer than I thought it would, and all my computers got stuck in the back of a truck for almost a month. Among other things, it meant that it took me about 3 weeks before I could update the open source hardware bank website... sure enough, some funny things happened:

DoubleWide ExtenderShield X

TripleWide ExtenderShield X

ButtonShield

I've been keeping track of the orders as they've come in, and in the last few days, both queues just got pushed over the middle fulcrum point. I guess that means... it's time to build me some DoubleWides and TripleWide X's. I'm going to put everything together and get cracking immediately.

Wooo hooooo!!!! I'm going to Maker Faire finally, after all these months of building stuff in NY, CT, and MA all by myself on the east coast. Here goes nothing...

I'm going to be at a little booth, number 289 just in the upper right of the map, east of the hills of Sparkfun, and the Lake of Exploratorium (whatever that is), and conveniently near the bathrooms, but opposite the concessions. I suppose you could say that's a good thing...

I "stole" Sparkfun's map from their site (sorry, Nate), but only because I couldn't download it from the makerfaire website. I made a little map of my rough proximity to Sparkfun, since I figure most guys attending will "baseline" where they are based on where Sparkfun is :)

I really hope to see some interesting projects and meet some new people... and maybe put some faces to email addresses finally.

After a week of helping Mike work with the fab house, soldering, cleaning and programming all the Illuminatos, then boxing them up, writing and signing the checks, and packing everything and getting them out the door... it feels like the final stretch of Rocky before the fight where he runs up the stairs – except with a few less cliches :)

I got a lot of emails along the way about what was going on, and how everything happened, so here goes:

1) After Illuminato Round 1 ran out, some people emailed, asking about when it would be back, because the extra I/O seemed useful, and Chris and Matt’s black surface and blinking lights underneath looked nice

2) Matt and Mike didn't have money to scrounge up for another run, so the PCB files sat on a shelf, waiting for the funding needed to be put into production

3) So everyone chipped in.

$30 cost to build/fund one$35 price of one unit

100 units were builtAll 100 units sold and delivered

Of the first 50 purchased to put Illuminato, Round 2 into production:29 were pre-bought @ $3521 were built/funded @ $30

The remaining 50 were funded by I-bills as part of the OSHW Bank. This means that prior to production, the full cost of Illuminato, Round 2 ($30 x 100 = $3000) was available through pre-purchase, individual funding, and I-bills from community members.

After production started, the remaining 100 - 29 = 71 units were pre-bought @ $35 apiece. The last 6 units, which are bank funded, were sold at $39 - slightly higher as it was a "premium" on getting delivery relatively sooner (rather than waiting for Round 3 to get funded and go to production)

29 were pre-bought right off the bat, yielding ~16% or $145 in profit that goes to pay for Mike's diet coke (so he can solder things and box stuff up :)

21 were funded at $30 and sold for $35 apiece. For each unit someone funded this way, he/she received the full proceeds of the sale. So Mike and I sent out $635 in checks, with a per unit profit of $5

When all was said and done, the goal was met: make open source hardware available for as cheaply as possible, don’t give any more money to bankers than you have to, and experiment with a new way of funding hardware…

Friday, May 8, 2009

With that in mind, Matt and Mike did another round of revisions from all the suggestions on the ButtonShield schematics from earlier this week. A couple of the big ones: adding a separate Caps Lock button to the corner, flanked by LEDs, and adding the quintessential Space "bar" to the bottom center (thanks Keith, Jason!). The Caps Lock and Space bar are outlined on the bottom, and the 32-button keyboard is shifted up slightly to make room for everything.

What do you think? And let me know if there's anything else I should add - jhuynh at gmail. Pre-buy/build is still open for the ButtonShield here, and to keep tabs on the "OSHW Bank project races", it's all up on the OSHW Bank page here.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The future looks bright for the most sophisticated Arduino IDE release, the Aardvark. Since Matt and I are constantly brainstorming on enhancements, I figured I'd take the time to transcribe a marinara stained brainstorming napkin or two and give a little sneak peak from the world of tomorrow.

You have the basic/original IDE mockup, nothing new here.

Then comes the vision Matt and I discussed . That Chicken Parm was so good (thanks to the cooks at the George's Pizza)! I like to think they helped a little bit with reaching this design...

Aardvark Arduino 0.8.7 is real similar to the napkin....

But the vision wouldn't be complete without the super handy Reference Wing to help lookup Arduino routines,

With the shaky internet out here in the back country of Connecticut I really need an offline reference sheet.

Monday, May 4, 2009

A lot of folks were asking about the ButtonShield after Matt's OpenBerry project, so Matt and Mike spent some time this weekend working on the next rev of the board. The circuits are still a work in progress, but I figured I'd throw together a mockup to get some suggestions and thoughts on where to go next as the ButtonShield makes its way through the OSHW Bank queue

Here's a look at the front side:

And an X-ray vision through to the back side:

Feel free to let me know what you think- jhuynh at gmail. The pre-buy/build for the ButtonShield is on the shop at, and it will also be part of the OpenBerry pack over here.